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Journal of Curriculum Theorizing Volume 26, Number 2, 2010 31

FEATURE ARTICLE

Agambens Theory of Biopower and

Immigrants/Refugees/Asylum SeekersDiscourses of Citizenship and the Implications

For Curriculum Theorizing

MICHALINOS ZEMBYLASThe Open University of Cyprus

N RECENT YEARS, questions of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers have preoccu-

pied public and educational discourses in the national and international agendas of many

western states. In light of imposing harsher laws against immigrants, refugees, and asylumseekers (e.g., in Europe, the US and Australia), these groups are increasingly finding themselves

in detention centers with their rights being violated (Tyler, 2006), while the politics of fear is

becoming a major technology of their dehumanization (Ahmed, 2004). These developmentshave important implications for curriculum theorizing and pedagogical practice, because the

violation of human rights and the politics of fear provide an influential political and affective

orientation for an educational system in a society (Zembylas, 2007, 2008). Contemporary school

curricula, especially in citizenship education, are caught up between reproducing and criticallyresponding to these developments.

What has caused my attention in these recent developments is an ambivalencein both public

and educational discourses on immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers: On the one hand, thesegroups are increasingly defined through the fear of the Other and they are presented to be a threat

to national belonging and security (Buonfino, 2004); on the other hand, liberal and humanitarian

discourses of citizenship portray immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers as invariably human

beingsin need to be cared for (Papastergiadis, 2006). While the contemporary hidden curriculumof fear(Marshall, Sears, & Schubert., 1999) constitutes immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers

as the symbolic figures of fearismthat is, the systematic (often unconscious) production andperpetration of fear on others (Fisher, 2006, p. 51)citizenship education curricula grounded in

liberal and humanitarian discourses attempt to generate forms of recognition that work against

identification of these groups as fearsome. But how is fearism interrelated with liberal and

humanitarian discourses of citizenship, and what are the implications for curriculum theorizing?



Zembylas Agambens Theory of Biopower


In this essay I will attempt to map this intersection through Giorgo Agambens work on

biopolitics. Drawing on Agambens analysis of biopower (that builds on Foucaults previous

writings), this essay draws upon elements of Agambens theory to highlight how liberal andhumanitarian ideas to garner recognition on behalf of others risk perpetuating the logic of

abandonment, which Agamben articulates in his theorization of bare lifeand the camp. Agam-

bens theory of biopower invokes a scrutinization of liberal and humanitarian perspectives inrelation to issues of belonging, subjectivity, and inclusion/exclusion in citizenship education

curricula. It is my contention, then, that by engaging with Agambens work, this article produces

a critique of the liberal/humanitarian appropriation of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.Furthermore, this article highlights an urgent need for a new conceptual framework to clarify

the curricular implications of the intersection between fearism and liberal/humanitarian dis-

courses on immigration, refugeedom and asylum seeking; identifying and critiquing this intersec-

tion helps to expose the complex impact of the politics of fear on the conceptualization ofcitizenship education curricula grounded in liberalism and humanitarianism (see also Zembylas,

2009). Agambens analysis is not without limitations, of course, especially in that it overlooks

the complex micro-forms of resistance within and across different states (Papastergiadis, 2006).

Therefore, I argue that in order to explore the aforementioned intersection and its implicationsfor curriculum theorizing, we (i.e., educators, researchers, curriculum theorists) need to under-

stand how immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers are produced as fearsome figures across multiplecultural sites (Tyler, 2006) and critique curricular discourses that are grounded in liber-

al/humanitarian claims of what it means to be a legitimate subject.

This essay comprises three parts. In the first part, I outline how the public imaginary is being

shaped by the fear of the Other and how citizenship education curricula often respond withliberal and humanitarian arguments. Then I turn to Agambens work on biopower and provide an

overview (not a comprehensive review) of his main ideas on biopolitics. In the final part of the

article, I engage in a critique of liberal and humanitarian arguments, utilizing Agambens theoryof biopower (yet without evading a critique of his writings) and arguing that a different concep-

tual framework of citizenship education curricula is neededone that recognizes the impact offearism but moves beyond liberal and humanitarian discourses and provides opportunities formeaningful resistance to both fear and the disavowal of others.

Fearism and the Liberal/Humanitarian Response in Citizenship Education

All over the western world, there is an increasing armory of technologies of control andexclusion that are mobilized against immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers (Nyers, 2003) suchas detention facilities and prevention of access to work, education, health care and housing

(Tyler, 2006). A new kind of global imaginary is being shaped by the fear of the Other or what

Fisher (2006) has termedfearism, that is, a process and discourse hegemony [which] creates anexperience of fear that is normalizedkeeping the cultural matrix of fear operative and rela-

tively invisible (2006, p. 51). The concept of fearism shows how popular culture and the media

have been the key elements in promoting the contemporary fear culture (Altheide, 2002; Furedi,

2006) and popularizing the hostile attitudes toward immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.The politics of fear (Ahmed, 2004) acknowledges the important role of power relations and

cultural scripts (Garland, 2001) in the process of figuring immigrants, refugees and asylum

seekers asfearsome; these groups are fearsome because they are constructed as a danger to our





(e.g., our national group) very existence. Fear of the Other is produced, circulated and capitalized

on to achieve political and economic purposes (Robin, 2004).

However, in this discourse fear is not reduced to a personal emotion, nor confined to apolitical sentiment that is manipulated by politicians (Papastergiadis, 2006). Rather, fear comes

from individuals and is then directed toward others and thus fear becomes a dominant relational

mode that aligns bodies to a particular sense of belonging (Ahmed, 2004). Therefore, fearproduces fearful subjects in relation to fearsome others and secures the very boundaries between

usand them(Zembylas, 2009). Fear creates boundaries between what I am and that which I

am not, through the very affect of turning awayfrom an object that threatens that which I am.Fear works by enabling some bodies to inhabit and move in public space and by restricting the

movement of other bodies to spaces that are enclosed, such as when nationstates create policies

to prevent illegal immigrants, unqualified refugees or bogus asylum seekers to enter the

state.1 It is the flow of fear among legal citizens that establishes these boundaries between us

and themthe fear that illegal immigrants, unqualified refugees and bogus asylum seekers, for

example, threaten the wellbeing of a state or the character of a nation.

Public discourses and news media against immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers play a

crucial role in circulating the idea that these groups pose a threat to the wellbeing and securityof a state. Once the Other is constituted as a threat to our sense of national belonging, then we

learn to desire and demand their exclusion from the sphere of human values, civic rights andmoral obligations (Papastergiadis, 2006; Tyler, 2006). It is this process that we need to interro-

gate, as Agamben urges us. He writes: It would be more honest and, above all, more useful to

carefully investigate[the] deployments of power by which human beings could be so com-

pletely deprived of their rightsthat no act committed against them could appear any longer acrime (1998, p. 171). But how do liberal and humanitarian discourses of citizenship education

respond to such obvious cases of misrecognition and violation of human rights?

In their recent critical review of contemporary discourses of citizenship, Knight Abowitz andHarnish (2006) conclude that liberal citizenship discourses are with civic republicanism the two

dominant discourses in K12 curricular and policy texts. In particular, liberal discourses priorit-ize individual rights and equality for exercising freedom. As Knight Abowitz and Harnishexplain, freedom from the tyranny of authority and the deliberative values of discussion are

viewed as the two primary values in this discourse. A significant focus of this discourse is also

on learning the values and skills necessary to take part in a multicultural society. In multicultural

societies in which immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers constitute an important componentof culturally diverse public life, schools perennially create and recreate citizens and the nation

(p. 664). An additional question, then, that may be raised at this point is: How do liberal dis-

courses of citizenship treat the representations of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers asfearsome individuals?

One of the central strategies employed by liberal discourses of citizenship to respond to fear-

ism is to generate forms of recognition for immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers that work againsttheir identification as hate figures (Tyler, 2006). Thus, there is a coupling of humanitarian and

liberal values; that is, humanitarian discourses ask the public and schools to see immi-

grants/refugees/asylum seekers as individuals with humanity, assuring us (the hosts) that theyare just like us. The strategy of re-humanizationof the Other is a pervasive one, seen especially

in key professional literature of the social studies, conflict resolution, and peace education and in

the literature of non profit and humanitarian organizations (Zembylas, 2008). In this discourse,

normative values relating to respect, empathy and tolerance ask humanitarian subjects (e.g.,





teachers, students, the public in general) to place themselves in the position of others (i.e.,

immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers) and recognize them as human beings, in ways that counter

their dehumanizing portrayals in public and the media (see Knight Abowitz & Harnish, 2006;Tyler, 2006).

It is usually assumed that liberal/humanitarian argumentation against the misrecognition of

immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers is a productive way of making dehumanization moredifficult (Tyler, 2006). However, a central concern of this article is whether the lib-

eral/humanitarian response to fearism becomes in any way complicit with the structures that

legitimate the exclusion of immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers. Is it possible that lib-eral/humanitarian arguments help sustain the invisibility of immigrants/refugees/asylum

seekers insofar as they perpetuate the same categories of inclusion/exclusion, authen-

tic/inauthentic, us/them, as xenophobic discourses (Tyler, 2006, p. 196)? As noted earlier,

immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers seem to be visible to the public as objects of both fear andsympathy. Other aspects of this population, however, are made invisiblefor instance, grant-

ing that these individuals are not citizens, many of their rights (e.g., work, education) are vi-

olated. In this sense, then, their visibility as a symbol of fearism and invisibility as citizens

depend on each other. This connection highlights two major challenges to liberal/humanitarianarguments.

First, the categories of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are rarely contested inliberal and humanitarian discourses of citizenship education curricula, but rather they are taken

for granted (Zembylas, 2008). Yet, these very concepts in their short life, as Tyler (2006) argues,

have worked to erase entire populations from view through strategies of (mis)recognition.

Seeking recognition (on behalf of the Other) is usually grounded on humanistic representationsof the victims (e.g., photographic closeups of faces and firstperson accounts). Although such

appeals can be extremely effective in forming compassionate recognition, they are situated

within the language of the law which they nevertheless contest (Tyler, 2006, p. 196). In otherwords, these appeals depend on the same categories of exclusion/inclusion, us/them as xeno-

phobic discourses. Interestingly, therefore, these dichotomous categories overlap with thoseembedded in fearism and work together to reinforce both fear and sympathy toward immi-grants/refugees/asylum seekers. It is for this reason that Agamben does not hesitate to take the

position that a failure to question the foundations of social structures that tolerate such categori-

zations essentially maintain a secret solidarity with the very powers they ought to fight (1998,

p. 133).Second, liberal/humanitarian discourses of citizenship are virtually impossible without re-

course to identity politics (Butler, 1992, p. 15) and the preservation of bounded membership

within ethnic and citizenship boundaries (Balibar, 2003). Citizenship education that is groundedin perceptions of bounded membership is still the most prevalent way that citizenship is taught

(Knight Abowitz & Harnish, 2006). In particular, Soysal (1994) points out that the feeling of

national belonging takes precedence to whatever precedence one happens to inhabit. Also,research on ethnic/citizenship identity, xenophobia, and stereotyping in schools highlights

notions of belonging and bounded membership (Zembylas, 2009). For example, some European

studies raise concerns about students feelings of intolerance toward immigrants (Van Peer,2006); analyses of civics education curricular intent have also shown that different priorities of

European countries in relation to national and European citizenship goals create tensions about

insiders and outsiders (Ortloff, 2006; Sutherland, 2002). In other words, the structures of modern

sovereignty such as rights and citizenship are rarely challenged in any critical way in citizenship





education (Knight Abowitz & Harnish, 2006) and the consequences of their limits are not

interrogated in terms of struggling for a new political community that is more inclusive. For

example, the very idea of legality (attached to citizenship) must be opposed (Agamben, 1998)however, this opposition needs to be translated into material forms that increase the agency of

marginalized individuals (Tyler, 2006). By emphasizing identities and differences (grounded in

legal arguments) among social groups, the politics of identity/difference diverts resources fromefforts to address the unjust material structures (Eisenberg, 2006) in which immi-

grants/refugees/asylum seekers find themselves and undermine the social solidarity upon which a

radical politics(Agamben, 1998) can be formed. There is certainly some form of utopianism inthe hint for unbounded notions of belonging and citizenship, pointing to a radicalized global

village, which has no concrete basis in reality. However, undoing the rights and privileges of

western citizens functions as a shift away from ideological concerns (e.g., citizenship rights)

toward issues of unjust material structures and power imbalances. In the next part of the essay, Iuse Agambens theory on biopower to interrogate the ways in which the figure of the immi-

grant/refugee/asylum seeker is appropriated by liberal/humanitarian arguments. This move will

help to make more visible how the categories of exclusion/inclusion, us/them work together to

reinforce fear and sympathy toward immigrants/ refugees/ asylum seekers.

Giorgio Agambens Theory on Biopower

Biopower is understood in its broadest sense as power over life. In his Homo Sacer (1998,2002, 2005) trilogy, Agamben offers a reformulation of Foucaults formation of biopower.

Foucault (1990, 2003, 2007) used the term biopower to designate the mechanisms through

which disciplinary strategies (enforced by producing docile bodies within sites such as the

prison, the school and the hospital) were replaced in modern times by a biopolitics whose powerwas the regulation of the life of populations. In defending society, the state acts preventively in

order to protect the populations biological wellbeing, thus it must kill the Other: If you wantto live, the other must die (Foucault, 2003, p. 255). In this way, killing is no longer perceived tobe murder but it is justified in the name of security. The politics of securitythe dispositif of

security as Foucault (p. 242) calls biopowerestablishes a binary categorization between us

and them, or between the normal (e.g., legitimate citizens) and the abnormal (e.g., illegalimmigrants, un-qualified refugees or bogus asylum seekers). The former deserve to live, while

the latter are expendable (based on racial and other kinds of profiling; see Foucault, 2003).

Agamben makes two crucial modifications of Foucaults position on biopower (Spinks,2008). The first one is that he disputes Foucaults claim that biopolitics is a specifically modernphenomenon and argues that biopower signifies an ongoing theme in western thought from

classical times onward. According to Agambens (1998) analysis in Homo Sacer, the first move

of classical western politics was the separation of the biological and the political, as seen inAristotles separation between life in the polis(i.e., bios, the political life) andzo(i.e., biologi-

cal life) or bare life, as Agamben calls it. As he writes: The entry of zointo the sphere of the

polisthe politicization of bare life as suchconstitutes the decisive event of modernity and

signals a radical transformation of the political-philosophical categories of classical thought(1998, p. 4). Whereas Foucault sees in biopower the major orientation of modern politics,

Agamben postulates that this concept is the bare essence of politics as such (Mesnard, 2004).

Thus, for Agamben, the concept of biopower means that, at the political level, what is at stake is





the life itself of the citizen, and not just his existence. Moving beyond the distinction between

polis and zo, political power, argues Mesnard, aims to control the deepest dimension of its

subjects.The second modification of Foucaults position is Agambens suggestion that biopolitics is

grounded in a structure of the exception (1998, p. 7). According to Agamben, the separation of

zoand biosis constituted by the simultaneous exclusion and inclusion of bare life. That is, theexclusion of biological life from political life is at the same time an inclusion, because zo is

there as that which is excluded: it is included by the very process of exclusion. As Agamben

explains:

The fundamental categorical pair of Western politics is not that of friend/enemy but that

of bare life/political existence, zo/bios, exclusion/inclusion. There is politics because

man is the living being who, in language, separates and opposes himself to his own barelife and, at the same time maintains himself in relation to that bare life in an inclusive ex-

clusion. (1998, p. 8)

Agamben thus asserts that all power is by its nature biopower that is constituted by its abilityto suspend itself in a state of exception and determine who lives and who dies. For Agamben

(2002), Auschwitz represented the classic example of this process, in which human bodies hadbeen declared merely to be biological, hence allowing their erasure without any consequences for

the perpetrators. Insofar as its inhabitants were stripped of every political status and wholly

reduced to bare life, the camp was also the most absolute biopolitical space ever to have been

realized, in which power confronts nothing but pure life, without any mediation (1998, p. 171).It is precisely for this reason that for Agamben (1998), the failure to question the separation

of humanitarian concerns from politicsand thus the treatment of immigrants/refugees/asylum

seekers as bare life, excluded from the political community and exposed to death at every turnsignals a secret solidarity between humanitarianism and the powers it should fight. The most

obvious examples of this are the neutrality of the International Committee of the Red Cross, thenon-political actions of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and therefusal of these organizations to comment on the actions of political regimes; this distinction is

also seen in the general populace of many nation-states in which great compassion is demon-

strated by donating millions of dollars to fund humanitarian aid, while showing great hostility to

those same suffering faces when they are more proximate strangers (Bretherton, 2006). Theidentification of the figure of the immigrant/refugee/asylum seeker as fearsome in political

rhetoric and news media is therefore coupled with humanitarian liberal claims, indicating how

immigrants/ refugees/asylum seekers function as inclusive exclusions of bare life in the waythat Agamben suggests. Whenzois included through an exclusion from political life, then bare

life (naked life) is produced. Humanitarian liberal claims view immigrants/ refugees/asylum

seekers simply as bodies, bare life separate from political life.Agamben goes as far as claiming that, Today it is not the city but rather the camp that is the

fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the West (1998, p. 181). Governments, for example,

suspend essential civil liberties in times of social crisis and decide who can be excluded and whocan be included. In this sense, the logicof the camp is transformed into a form of sociality and is

generalized (p. 20; pp. 174175); consequently, the camp signifies a state of exception that is

normalized in the contemporary social space (p. 166). In the state of exception or what Agamben

calls a zone of irreducible indistinction (1998, p. 9), the originary relation of law to life is not





application but abandonment (p. 29). He who has been banned is not, in fact, simply set

outside the law and made indifferent to it but rather abandonedby it, that is, exposed and threat-

ened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside, become indistinguishable (p. 28,authors emphasis). Following Foucault, Agamben claims that the contemporary state is not

based on citizens as free subjects, but on citizens as naked lives; that is, citizens on the threshold,

never once and for all in or out (Ek, 2006). For Edkins and Pin-Fat (2005), Agambens barelife is essentially a life without power relations, that is, a relationship of violence, in the Fou-

cauldian sense (see Foucault, 1983). This hidden incorporation of bare life into both the political

realm and the structure of citizenship, according to Agamben, inscribes dangerous links amongcitizenship, nation and biological kinship (Ziarek, 2008); those links are legalized in a modern

sovereign state and citizenship education curricula (especially those grounded in lib-

eral/humanitarian arguments) simply perpetuate this legality (see Knight Abowitz & Harnish,

2006).Agamben takes a step further in his investigation of sovereign state and political rights by

going back to a figure of archaic Roman law, homo sacer(literally sacred man), referring to an

individual who can be killed (without consequences) but not sacrificed (in religious rituals).

Homo sacer, then, is essentially someone beyond the protection of the law (with no politicalrights) or even worthy to be sacrificed. According to Agambens account, homo sacer is an

essential figure permeating western thought. His double exclusionboth from human law anddivine lawis also a double inclusion: the exclusion of both the sacred and the profane (Edkins,

2003). For Agamben, homo saceris not only a figure in the legal philosophy of ancient Rome,

but is also a subject of recurrent materializations in history (Dean, 2004). It is through the state

of exception as seen in mechanisms of colonization that Western states have become involved inthe differentiation and categorization of people (Diken & Laustsen, 2005; Ek, 2006).

In other words, it is the nexus between the materialization of the state of exception (e.g.,

through inhumane detention centers and other migration and refugee camps throughout theworld) and the fear for the figure of the immigrant/ refugee/asylum seeker that reveals the

limitations in the framework of both state-centric perspectives and liberal humanitarian views(Papastergiades, 2006). A crucial notion in the understanding of the camp and the state ofexception is uncovered here, according to Ek (2006): the connection between colonialism/racism

and biopolitics. That is, one form of life (the immigrant/refugee/asylum seeker) is separated out

in an act of colonialism/racism and imagined as an abject figure of fear and a threat to another

form of life (the society). As the logic of the camp becomes more generalized in society, theproduction of naked life is thus extended beyond the camps walls; the camp replaces polis, as

Agamben argues, and therefore the Aristotelian distinction between polis and naked life, col-

lapses.

An Alternative Politics and Discourse of Citizenship Education

Agambens analysis of biopower offers a valuable basis for developing an alternative re-

sponse to the liberal/humanitarian discourses of citizenship, because Agamben traces and speci-

fies explicitly the problematic in the priority given to national security and citizenship over moralobligation to the Other (Papastergiadis, 2006). Liberal and humanitarian discourses grounded in

human rights or principles of justice remain blind to the biopolitical aspects analyzed in Agam-

bens work (Ek, 2006). The problem with liberal/humanitarian arguments is that they appropriate





the figure of the Other in ways that elide the substantive differences between ways of being

displaced from home (Ahmed, 2000, p. 5). Differences are concealed by universalizing the

condition of displacement and by placing all immigrants/ refugees/asylum seekers into a singularcategory, as if they all experience the same thing. Agambens pointwhich takes him beyond a

familiar critique of rejecting singularitiesis to question the very notions of humanity, citizen-

ship and the rule of law within the modern nation state which make possible the generalization ofthe logic of the camp. In this part of the article, I want to consider how Agambens views can

trouble current understandings of citizenship education (Richardson & Blades, 2006) and

expand the set of meanings around citizenship.In their review of contemporary discourses of citizenship, Knight Abowitz and Harnish

(2006) urge educators and curriculum theorists to build on the strong array of diverse critical

discourses of citizenship (e.g., critical citizenships, transnationalism) because these discourses

challenge traditional definitions of bounded membership and push against traditional bounda-ries of agency, identity, and membership (p. 680). Cosmopolitan (Nussbaum, 1997), transna-

tional (Baubck, 1994) and post-national (Soysal, 1994) views have challenged normative

meanings of identity, membership, citizenship practice, and education. Although critical and

transnational perspectives are certainly included in scholarly debates, point out Knight Abowitzand Harnish (2006), the current formal, taught curriculum of citizenship produces a relatively

narrow scope and set of meanings for what citizenship is and can be (p. 657). The question is:How can Agambens ideas enrich the current taught curriculum of citizenship?

For Agamben, to turn only to liberal/humanitarian (e.g., human rights) discourses in ad-

dressing the situation of others (i.e., immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers), without also attempt-

ing to think beyondsuch discourses, is to fail to recognize that the fates of human rights and thenation-state are bound together such that the decline and crisis of one necessarily implies the end

of the other (1998, p. 134). Agamben seems to be suggesting that it is very important to under-

stand the devastating consequences of bounded membership; critical citizenships can certainlyalign forces with Agambens views on interrogating bounded membership.

Faced with increased migration after the Second World War, Europe and the United States inparticular, have gradually created an increasingly complex system of civic stratifications andimmigration procedures that is dependent on bounded membership and the immi-

grant/refugee/asylum seeker as a fearsome figure who threatens our bounded membership

(Tyler, 2006). The results are millions of stateless people inside the territorial states and inhu-

mane citizenship and migration policies and practices (Ek, 2006). As it has already been noted,Agambens analysis reveals all the shortcomings of the intersection between fearism and liberal/

humanitarian discourses of citizenship that are still founded in territorial mythsmyths that

ignore the biopolitical matrix (Minca, 2006).Agamben essentially asks us to see the current juridico-political frame as ideologywith ma-

terial implications; at the center of this ideological frame is the bourgeois nationstate, which

bestows individuals with rights and progressively incorporates them into a body (the nation).For instance, the expression I love or hate them because they are like me, or not like me

(Ahmed, 2005, p. 108) indicates the ideological aspects that collective bodies entail. Hence in

hating an Other, a subject also loves itself and those that are similar to itself. This attachmentstructures political life within a community and provides an affective orientation that characte-

rizes the thinking of this community (or nation). As Kristeva (1993) argues, the nation is an

effect of how bodies move toward it and create boundaries. The citizens become members of the

bodynation, members to be managed, measured in certain ways, and contained (Minca, 2007).





Thus the definition of belonging to the nation becomes the states guiding political preoccupa-

tion. [] It is within this exclusive inclusionthat the very principle of citizenship and the

idea(l) of belonging are born (p. 88). When the nationstate begins to systematically isolate abare lifeendowed with citizenship rights or notthen citizenship becomes definable only in

terms of the camp, as Agamben asserts.

Critical and transnational discourses on citizenship can use Agambens views to raise ques-tions about identity, membership and citizenshipquestions that are issues of public debate, yet

in curricular texts such questions are marginalized (Knight Abowitz & Harnish, 2006). For

example, immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers can be considered as limit concepts (e.g., seeAgamben, 1994) to radically call into question the fundamental categories of the nationstate,

including rights and citizenship. Immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers are powerful figures that

invite educators, curriculum theorists, students, and the whole community to confront the politics

of what Agamben has described as inclusive exclusion. This inclusive exclusion brings to mindKristevas (1982) view of the abject.

The abject for Kristeva is an object which is excluded but which still challenges its master

(1982, p. 2). Although it is excluded, it is simultaneously included in that it continues to disturb

borders (between us and them) and norms. Thus the abject does not stand opposed to thesubject, at a distance, definable. The abject is other than the subject but is only just the other side

of the border (Young, 1990, p. 144). What is of interest here is an understanding of abjection asthat which disturbs borders and norms such as rights and citizenships. The immigrant/ refugee/

asylum seeker becomes the abject Other, the homo sacer who has been left behind or been

excluded from the territorial boundaries that confer the rights of citizenship (Papastergiadis,

2006).Kristevas notion of abject Other can help unfold the unconscious fears that have been di-

rected toward the figure of the immigrant/refugee/asylum. This arrangement of unconscious and

fear, argues Papastergiadis (2006), structures the multiple threads that interconnect fear with thestranger other. The effect of seeing the Other as a stranger allows the nation to emerge and

involves the dualities of us and them. A boundary is established to separate those who belongfrom those who do not belong to the nation. A critical feature of Kristevas (1991) account is thatshe identifies the mechanisms deployed for resisting the incursion of foreign elements to the

nation (Papastergiadis, 2006). Thus, these defense mechanisms toward the abject Other are

ambivalent: they both exaggerate and trivialize the figure of the Other, while also asserting the

right to exert violence. Once the Other is constructed as abject and fearsome, they are excludedfrom the filed of human values, civic rights and moral obligations[thus] maintaining the

boundary that divides us from them (Papastergiadis, 2006, p. 433). In the case of immi-

grants/refugees/asylum seekers, their figures are constructed in such ways, as being so strangeand dangerous to the nation that they could not be included without inflicting serious damage on

everyone else. The violence against the Other, then, is seen as a justified response toward the

threat posed by the state-less Other.The aim of reconsidering the abject Other through Agambens theory is that the figures of

immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers enable educators, curriculum theorists, students, and the

whole community toseeour ownbare life and understand that these figures are at the heart of allindividuals, that is, we are all immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers. This argument echoes

Kristevas (1993) notion that the stranger is me, as well as you, is already part of all of us

and them; thus the nation does not require violence toward strangers, as strangers are part of

the nation, rather than displaced or excluded from civic life. Kristeva, however, asks us to avoid





any simple opposition between a politics of nationalism and one that essentially abandons the

very idea of the nation; opening the community up to others does not mean unconditional love

(Ahmed, 2005).On the other hand, Agamben (1994), romanticizing the figure of the immi-

grant/refugee/asylum seeker, asserts that it is only when the citizen learns to acknowledge the

immigrant, refugee and asylum seeker he or she is, that an alternative political reality is possible.The idea that we are all immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers must be perceived with caution

because some are already recognized as others (Ziarek, 2008). As Tyler (2006) argues, Agam-

bens work has something important to tell us, yet his utopian account does not say anythingabout what happens to the already politically excluded, i.e., the refugees and asylum seekers,

who cannot even be recognized as such despite their best efforts. Undoubtedly, the idea that we

are all immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers needs to be interrogated in efforts to bring Agam-

bens theoretical insights to pedagogical practice, otherwise this idea may fall into the samecamp of the liberal discourse of sameness albeit through a different entry point. It is thus

important for students not simply to distribute strangeness to everyone (we are all strangers) but

to recognize how strangeness is already unevenly distributed (Ahmed, 2005). This uneven

distribution needs to be explored in schools in terms of who gets constructed as the abject figureof the immigrant/refugee/asylum seeker as an effect of relations of power that cannot be simply

willed away by sympathy.The evidence from the US and Europe shows that schools have been essentially caught both

in the politics of fear and the appealing arguments of liberal/humanitarian discourses (Zembylas,

2009). Exploring the interrelation between fearism and liberal/humanitarian discourses of

citizenship as well as the implications for curriculum theorizing becomes increasingly valuablefor educators. Insights from Agambens work show that the strategy of dehumanizing the Other

is not just a moral scandal, but a process that is deeply involved in the colonization of biopolitics

and our own exclusive inclusion(Papastergiadis, 2006). Agambens analysis also enables educa-tors and curriculum theorists to pay attention to the entanglement of the abject other and the

fearful citizen in contemporary times. Although he provides no solutions and overlooks themicro-forms of resistance within and across different states (see Foucault, 1983, 1990), educatorsand curriculum theorists are alerted to consider how such resistances are killed in the making by

reproducing bounded memberships.

Conclusion: Toward a Utopian Alternative?

This article has highlighted the curricular implications of the intersection between fearismand liberal/humanitarian discourses of citizenship in relation to the figures of immi-

grants/refugees/asylum seekers. It has suggested that liberal/ humanitarian discourses of citizen-

ship are complicit to the structures that produce and circulate fearism. Also, it has been arguedthat in order to explore the curricular implications of the intersection between fearism and

liberal/humanitarian discourses of citizenship, it is necessary that we learn to recognize the

campas the symbolic (but often material) paradigm of the public and pedagogical field of

modernityand its complex transformations in various shapes and contents (Agamben, 1998).Calling attention to and exploring the various ways in which the logic of abandonment, bare life

and the camp are manifest in public and educational discursive practices is an important task for

curriculum theorists today.





Admittedly, the case of immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers is difficult to approach within

the current juridicopolitical frame because rights are interpreted primarily as citizen rights so

those eligible for human rights are already excluded (see Arendt, 1951). The human rights ofimmigrants/refugees/asylum seekers are in a zone where there is no structure that can ensure

them (Papastergiadis, 2006). Unless there is a critique and rearticulation of the privileges of

western citizensin both public and pedagogical discourses of citizenshipincluding grapplingwith the legacies of colonization and racismit will be difficult to dismantle the powerful link

between fearism and the figure of immigrant/refugee/asylum seeker as an abject Other. Essen-

tially, what Agambens work urges us to address in both schooltaught citizenship and publicdiscourses on citizenship is: Why do western citizens think they have the rights and privileges

they do, and how willing are they to undo their own privileges because these privileges are

oppressive to others?

Agambens thinking, of course, has not evaded criticism for a number of reasons (e.g., seeEk, 2006; Long, 2006; Neal, 2006; Ziarek, 2008). For example, Neal (2006) criticizes Agamben

for being dualistic in his approach, especially in his theorization of homo sacer. Similarly, Long

(2006) asserts that for Agamben someone is either homo saceror potentially homo sacer; there is

nothing in-between. A related critique by Ek (2006) is that Agamben romanticizes homo sacerexemplified in the refugee as the figure of naked lifepar excellence (p. 371). These theoretical

limitations unavoidably pose limitations in understanding the mechanism of construction ofimmigrants/refugees/asylum seekers as objects of fear and sympathy, because the romanticiza-

tion of this population becomes a sentimental trope that strengthens existing stereotypes of

immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers. This Wizard of Ozscenario, writes Tyler (2006, p. 197),

in which the curtain of illusion falls back to reveal the operations of power is incredibly simplis-tic, despite Agambens theoretical complexity.

Furthermore, Ziarek (2008), writing from a feminist perspective, criticizes Agamben for not

sufficiently addressing two crucial questions: the problem of resistance and the negative diffe-rentiation of bare life with respect to racial and gender differences (p. 89). The first problem,

Ziarek (2008) explains, is that Agambens work lacks a theory of emancipatory possibilities andthus his theory implies that there is no escape from it. For example, it is unclear how opposingthe notion of legality per seas it is embedded in sovereign nationstate citizenship bounda-

riescan translate into material forms of opposition to the exclusion of immi-

grants/refugees/asylum seekers or will grant this population the possibility of agency (Tyler,

2006). What happens to the already politically excluded, those who know bare life and alreadylive it, like those refugees or asylum seekers who despite liberal/humanitarian concerns cannot

even be recognized as refugees or asylum seekers? As Agamben admits: nothing in it [the

body]seems to allow us to find solid ground on which to oppose the demands of sovereignpower (1998, p. 187). Hence, Agambens diagnosis of contemporary biopolitics is, as Rabinow

and Rose (2006) suggest, monolithic, because he does not consider (as Foucault does) how

biopower can be resisted other than to suggest that bare life is caught within a state of exception(Cadman, 2009). The second problem, continues Ziarek, is that Agamben ignores how bare life

is implicated in the gendered, sexist, colonial, and racist configurations of biopolitics (2008, p.

93). If we argue that bare life emerges as the aftereffect of the destruction of the symbolicdifferences of gender, ethnicity, race, or class, writes Ziarek, this means that bare life is still

negatively determined by the destruction of a historically specificway of life (p. 93, authors

emphasis). Agamben does not consider the practice of liberation because he focuses on under-

mining sovereign power rather than on transforming bare life. Yet, bare life cannot be considered





in isolation from racial and gender differences (and the power relations involved)an important

issue that is also neglected in many liberal/humanitarian discourses.

In light of the above criticisms, Agambens work has been characterized by some scholars asutopian (e.g., see Papastergiadis, 2006; Tyler, 2006). Bearing in mind Agambens theory of

biopower, Lewis (2006, 2007) offers an educational intervention by suggesting that a utopian

turn is secured, a not-yet conceptualized relation between zo and bios where they do notmerely supersede one another, nor collapse into a state of indistinction. Instead, zobecomes its

own biosand biosits ownzo (2006, p. 175). What can be understood by a utopian alternative

is that a biopolitical taught curriculum of citizenship works to transform currere into a produc-tive generative life through which new notions of democratic community can evolve (Lewis,

2007, p. 700). It is important, then, that educators and curriculum theorists recognize biopower

and its implications within edutopian (Peters & FreemanMoir, 2006) projects. But if an es-

cape from biopower is not possible (according to Agambens theorization), then how and wheredoes an edutopian project emerge?

Interest in utopian thinking is now being renewed in education (Lewis, 2007; Papastephanou,

2008); a detailed working of the multiple notions and manifestations of edutopian thought is

impossible here, for reasons of space. However, it is sufficient to emphasize two ideas in thecontext of this article: first, the notion of utopia as a possibility for opening a number of alterna-

tives in citizenship education (Callan, 1999); and second, the importance of analyzing therelation between utopia and power, drawing on the later work of Foucault (Lewis, 2007). In

relation to the first idea, Callan argues that we might cultivate a citizenship identity in which a

cosmopolitan ideal of world citizenship is brought into the foreground; or we might seek to

elicit a new kind of democratic imaginary attuned to the claims of justice both for the civicoutsiders and insiders. Can we allow, for example, the demand for justice as manifest in the

claims of immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers to play a critical role in reconceiving our own

rights and privileges and rights of others, not only grounding these claims in the limits of modernlaw, but also inhabiting the democratic imaginary to come? As far as the second idea is con-

cerned, new forms of resistance can emerge by further complicating the production of a limitfigure of bare life such as immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers (see Foucault, 1983, 2003).Foucaults (1983) influential notion of the conduct of conduct emphasizes that power acts on

subjects insofar as they are free. For Foucault (2003), the ultimate problem of modern societies is

that biopower (as power over life) remains unacknowledged. For instance, racism and colonial-

ism are mechanisms that allow biopower to regulate the population. Thus, utopia, in this context,is an attempt to reconfigure power in relation to life (Lewis, 2007). In this sense, immi-

grants/refugees/asylum seekers are not disempowered masses escaping from the tyranny of

sovereign nationstates but a vehicle for social and political transformation (e.g., cosmopolitancitizenship).

As this discussion has shown, Agamben allows us to diagnose new forms of domination in

contemporary life that are often hidden in benign humanitarian and liberal claims. Curriculumtheorizing in relation to citizenship education must further articulate the politics of differentiation

and particularly how humanitarian arguments and acts of recognition might become aware of

their own shortcomings and complicity with racism and colonialism. Drawing on Agambenstheory of biopower, the utopian function of curriculum theorizing in citizenship education can

attempt to establish a radical break with the logic of abandoning others on the basis of citizenship

rights. What is at stake, as Butler (1993) argues, is imagininghow socially saturated domains of

exclusion be recast from their status as constitutive to beings who might be said to matter (p.





189). If, as Agamben (1998) asserts, we have not managed yet to heal the fracture between

zo and bios, then immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers as abject figures offer education

within schools opportunities to work at the limits of what is available in citizenship discourses,while contesting the existing regimes of truth.

NOTES

1. These adjectives (i.e., illegal, unqualified and bogus) highlight the characterizations that are often utilized in

public representations of immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers. These adjectives turn our attention to the mechanisms

of construction and functions of the negative stereotypes assigned to immigrants/refugees/asylum seekers.

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